


Dark Hours (for Dark Business)

by HelenaKey



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abstractionism, Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Atheist Subtext, Colors As Fictional Device, Confusion, Flashbacks, Inspired by Poetry, Isolation, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), References to Depression, Repressed Memories, Sensory Deprivation, The Void (Marvel), Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenaKey/pseuds/HelenaKey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's sacrifice and Loki's failure were't related in the slightest. Tony had wanted to save his realm. Loki had only been searching for power. One of them was good, and the other one was evil. But in the end, their actions would lead to the same out come; an endless pool of nothingness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Hours (for Dark Business)

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I have to say that this is very strange. And very creepy. Seriously, I have never written anything like this before, and I've been writting for a while already. I still like it, for some reason. It's strange but it feels real and that's the important thing in a story, isn't? Anyway, I hope you like it. And in the small chance that you do, please leave feedback. It'll totally make my day ;D

Tony couldn't remember much of his times in the **sun light**.

He hadn't forgotten them entirely. They were always with him, when the Darkness around became too overwhelming, and the painful grasp of nostalgia took hold of his heart. His memories were vivid with life and emotion; always full of the blinding colors that had illuminated his earthly life.

_Between all of them_

_the color that called his attention the most_

_was the orange, yellow flicker_

_of **summer afternoons**_

It was the color that had tainted the easeful days of his childhood, when Maria would take him out _(to a park, to the country side, to the mall, to the super market)_ and the rays of the sun would shine over her smiling face. He couldn't remember much about her. He knew that she was small, and her skin was of a nice brunette color. She had a mole on her right shoulder, and other one in her belly, close to her navel. Whenever she smiled, light wrinkles would appear around her eyes, and her yellow teeth would poke out of her mouth, shinning slightly. She wasn't what one would call a **_beautiful woman_** _(not beautiful like the actresses, and singers and super models that Howard used to_ **bang** _i_ _n his office hours, not caring if his wife suspected it or not)._ But she was **pretty** , in a nice, motherly way.

 _Grey_  was a color that came with _college_ , _university_  and _classmates_. He could smell it in the air around him during his English class, and his Physics class, and his History class; silently rotting the edges of his lungs and gnawing at his hungry belly. The color of ~~boredom~~ , of stillness and _hatred_. He hated color  grey, and it was one of the few **life colors** that he never missed.

The color of the silent nights // _of the hunger and loneliness gnawing at his soul_ // was an insipid color **blue**. It whirled inside him; in his dreams and nightmares, in time, coldness, and heat – in food, thirst and water. It lived in the rays of the sun behind the curtain, and in the rays of the moon. It was nothing, and everything at the same time. It was sadness, and want and desire; and the eternal wait for something unknown.

blue

was Tony's

favorite

_color _

All those memories were nothing but that. (Memories)

Now everything around was silent, and dark, and **_Void._**

He doesn't know what this Darkness is made of. He doesn't know where it came from or if it would ever go away. But he is trapped in it, and he knows that there is no way out. In its full strength, it forbids him to move freely. It separates him from his mind and it strangles his thoughts. It robes him memories, and ideas and sensations, and Tony knows it, but whenever he fights it, and tries to get them back, he forgets what was taken from him in the first place. For sometimes he gets distracted, and the Darkness consumes him, and he starts to forget. Forget who he is, who he was, and how he got there (who brought him there). And when it happens, the grasp of nostalgia **_disappears_**.

_< <It's the Mad Titan's punishment.>>_

That's the answer he gets whenever he asks himself out loud why is he doomed to such fate. Loki always gives him an answer, no matter how many times he asks, and he remembers. He always remembers, and he always believes him, because between all his memories, and ideas, and sensations, Loki is the one that he never forgets.

_< <It's okay. Calm down.>>_

That was the first thing that he heard when he found himself trapped in the **Void** ; the dark and silent place where all the worlds, and times and lives converge. It was the sound of his own voice.  

_< <I can't.>>_

Loki was standing beside him; his whole body tense with the grievances of human dread. The hold around his arm was becoming tighter by the second, and the only thing Tony could do, silently sharing this stranger's terror, was stay close and remain calm.

_< <It's too dark.>>_

_< <It's too dark.>>_

_< <I'm going to **fall.** >> _

He couldn't forget this memory. _Not this one._ But the fear it produced him always prompted Tony to put it aside and ignore it. Between the Darkness, in the uncertainty of the unknown, remember Loki's long limbs wrapped around himself; the slow shivers of panic barely reaching his back and the painful thorns of madness finally brushing the surface, was too overwhelming for him.

_< <How did you get out last time?>>_

_< <I didn´t.>>_

_< <The Other pulled me out.>>_

Tony had winced at the dispassionate voice, and not knowing what else to do, he knelt at Loki's side, and waited. And he looked. Because the Darkness was around them, and they were alone; and Loki's voice was the only sound that would reach his ears. Because this was how things would be from now on, and there was nothing in the world around him but Loki. Nothing to see, or ear, or touch but Loki. So he stared, and waited.

That was the first and last time that Tony saw Loki crumbling apart. 

When he finally stood up, and the shivers stopped, and the fear was hidden, Tony told himself that it was something that he never wanted to see again. Loki went silent, and Tony went silent too. They stayed close, one shoulder brushing the other, just for the sake of that warm presence of life that reminded them that they weren´t alone.

Time passed, and Tony learned that the passage of time didn't matter where he was. The **colors of life** were extinguished; _gone_ , never to return, and he got used to it. Nothing never happened. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, and he didn't need to. The only thing that ever reached him was Loki's deep voice. Sometimes it was tired, sometimes it was rough, and sometimes it didn't show anything; rare times, when the silence became unbearable and the slow ache of claustrophobia began to creep over Tony's heart, it was soothing.

When he and Loki exchanged a few words _(few as they were)_ Tony was happy. It was the middle ground. Something between the Darkness. He didn't care what they talked about; he just liked to hear his voice - compare the deep baritone that would make Loki's chest and back buzz in a weird echo, as if he were a sounding board or a hollow cave, with the soft and calm tone that he could muster when he felt sad or scared. When Loki talked things were  peaceful, so Tony liked to listen.

He thought about a lot of things, at the beginning. He couldn't tell if it was for hours, or days, or weeks; because where he lay, time didn't exist. Time didn't matter. He thought about Maria, and his childhood. He thought about Howard, and his adolescence. He thought about his days as a young, ambitious adult; about women, and money, and liquor. Whenever he thought about _Pepper_ he felt lust, and sadness, and guilt. He thought about the first time they had sex, and the second time, and the last time, and whenever he found himself trapped in those memories he would  _want._ He would want, and nothing would ever come. Slowly, the Darkness took that feeling away  _(as it had taken hunger and sleepiness)_ and it never reached him again.

When memories were no longer enough, he started to imagine things. He imagined himself lying wide awake at night, mesmerized by the sound of the rain. And it rained for days and nights, and weeks and months, and in his mind, it never stopped. The rain would became a storm, a hurricane, a tornado, or a blizzard. It always changed, just to keep his mind busy. Soon, the game bored him and he tried to think about something else. He imagined the sun sleeping quietly between the Darkness, waiting for the right moment to shine again. Nothing else came out of that fantasy, and he forgot it quickly.

He tried not to think about persons that he knew, about faces, about movies or books, because it reminded him of the life he had lost. He always thought about basic things, elemental things, that he could miss, but that couldn't  _hurt him._ He imagined his lungs dying slowly inside his rib cage, no longer able to pull air in and out of his body. He wondered if he was still breathing, or if the Darkness took that away too. He imagined his tongue as _dry as a carpet_ , fallling out of his mouth, black and sore for the lack of use. He wondered what it felt like to _**cough out blood**_ , or be _**skinned alive**_. He was wondering if he could pull the skin off his body with his own nails when Loki touched him for the first time.

_(It was a light touch, but it made him went completely still)._

He passed his nails over his chest _(slowly, not hard)_ making him feel tickles. 

Tony didn't move, and he didn't say anything. 

 Loki stayed silent too.

The nails became a hand stretching over his chest, feeling the beating of his heart; the heat of his body. Tony put his hand over Loki's and squeezed _(more hard, more tight as the time passed)_. He made a strange sound when a feet came out of the darkness to brush against his leg. Loki's arms found their way around his back, and Tony rolled to rest over his side. He felt a shiver, and he put his arms around Loki's neck. He felt sad. And cold. And bitter. But he didn't care. 

They were both **breathing**.

They were **alive**.

And they were  _ **together**._

Nothing else mattered.

 

All the color in Tony's life became the black and white of Loki's eyeballs, the grey-green of his iris and the red of the thin veins that surrounded them. Sometimes, when he looked close enough, he could see himself reflected on those green eyes (like an illusion, a metaphor, or a signal) and he would _want._ Want something that he had wanted before, many years ago and that buried beneath emptiness, and silence, and dried mounts of sand he had forgotten. Long for something unknown and heavy that now, trapped in the deepest of darkness, he knew he couldn't have.

Loki's illusions were what kept him sane. In the flick of his hand Tony could see light and darkness. Heaven and Earth. He could see the moons and the starts falling apart in white dust, and he could see the sun; always big and bright and _beautiful,_ but never **warm**. He could see cold beacon slowly melting in the forest, and the orange hue that shyly sparkled in the roof of his summer house when he was a child.  And he could see Loki, as a frozen/invisible being in this oppressive space. Loki, with cold skin and long limbs and  green eyes, looking at him like a starry sky. Like a deep/soft voice making echo in the dark.

_[LokiLokiLoki]_

For Loki's lips were soft and red under his, and Loki was cold **_(orange, yellow flicker pounding heavily in his heart)_** and he was real, and he was there, and he was _blue._

And Loki

was Tony's

favorite

_ thing._

 

_< <I had a dream, which was not a dream at all!>> _

Tony would scream, dancing and laughing and loving inside the **ring of fire** , knowing that the world around him wasn't real, and not caring.

_< <The bright sun was extinguish'd and the stars_

_did wander darkling in the eternal space! >> _

Loki would scream, giggling as the flames grew **higher**.

_< <Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth_

_swung blind and blackening in the moonless air! >>_

And their footsteps and falls and stumbles would stay, as never fading marks in the sand. As traces of life in the shorelines of a raging sea. And the flames would grow, and grow, and _grow_ until they could touch the night sky and reach the dull rays of the moon and the small flicker of the stars. And Tony would let himself fall in the dust, and Loki would fall with him, not caring that the earth beneath their feet was nothing but empty space.

_< <Morn came and went – and came, and brought no day._

_And men forgot their passions in the dread! >>_

And Tony embraced delirium, and he forgot Maria's moles and wrinkles, and Howard _**bagging**_ beautiful women in his office hours. He forgot  college and university and classmates. And the sun that was real, and the moon that was real. And The Mad Titan, and the punishment, and the whole Earth were forgotten. For everything before Loki didn't matter, and Loki was no longer willing to make him remember.

_< <And they did live by watchfires – and the thrones_

_the palaces of crowned Kings_

_were burnt for **beacon.** >>_

And when the magic ran out, and Loki's illusions faltered, only his voice remained; for even the Darkness was gone.

_< <I love this poem!_

_It is beautiful!_

_Stunning! >>_

 

Loki would whisper at his ear - his head buried in Tony's neck.

 

_< <When I'm **King** , and all the Nine Worlds  **kneel down** at my feet,_

_This one shall be the Hymn of my New Kingdom. >>_

And Tony would laugh,

and woul squeeze a place in Loki's waist

that would make him laugh too.

 

_< <Isn't a bit dark for a Nation's Hymn?>>_

_< <That's why it would be perfect.>>_

_< <It shall not give **praises** _

_and admiration                    to those_

_who are **liars** and **killers** >>_

 

And then they both would stay still,

and they would breathe

and they would live _._

_< <It shall not **blind** the common folk,_

_and It shall not lie to the weaks of mind. >>_

_< <It shall not tell **lies** >>_

_< <Only the darkest and most painful truths.>>_

_< <We would recite it all the time>>_

_< <In feasts>> _

_< <Festivities>>_

_< <In **the** **first day** of the week and in **the last** >>_

 

_< <So it would always stay with us>>_

_< <In **our darkest hours** >> _

_< <And in the **brightest** >> _

 

And they would only  **speak**

And they would only  **listen**

Because they couldn´t do anything else

_< <And you would be known as the only King in Asgard's history_

_who dared to tell the truth >>_

_< <Not just in Asgard's>>_

_< <In Jotunheim's>>_

_< <In Midgard's>>_

_< <In Alfheim's>>_

_< <All the Nine Worlds, and beyond, **shall known my name!** >>_

_< <Wherever I want to go, I'll go.>>_

_< <Whatever I want to do, I'll do it.>>_

_< <No one shall stop me. For **I'll be King!** >>_

_And **I shall be free**. _

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Darkness, Lord Byron.


End file.
